A network provides for communication among members of the network. Wireless networks allow connectionless communications. Wireless local area networks (WLANs) with ranges of about 100 meters or so have become increasingly popular. Wireless local area networks are generally tailored for use by computers and provide fairly sophisticated protocols to promote communications. Wireless personal area networks with ranges of about 10 meters are poised for growth, and increasing engineering development effort is committed to developing protocols supporting personal area networks.
With limited range, wireless personal area networks may have fewer members and require less power than wireless local area networks. The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is developing an IEEE 802.15.3a wireless personal area network standard directed to high data rate communications. The term piconet refers to a wireless personal area network having an ad hoc topology comprising communicating devices coordinated by a piconet coordinator (PNC). Piconets may form, reform, and abate spontaneously as various wireless devices enter and leave each other's proximity. Piconets may be characterized by their limited temporal and spatial extent. Physically adjacent wireless devices may group themselves into multiple piconets running simultaneously.
One proposal to the IEEE 802.15.3a task group is the multi-band orthogonal frequency division multiplex (MB-OFDM) proposal developed by the MBOA special interest group (SIG) that divides an approximately 7.5 GHz bandwidth from about 3.1 GHz to 10.6 GHz into fourteen approximately 528 MHz wide bands. These fourteen bands are organized into four band groups each having three 528 MHz bands and one band group of two 528 MHz bands. An example piconet may transmit a first MB-OFDM symbol in a first 312.5 nS duration time interval in a first frequency band of a band group, a second MB-OFDM symbol in a second 312.5 nS duration time interval in a second frequency band of the band group, and a third MB-OFDM symbol in a third 312.5 nS duration time interval in a third frequency band of the band group. Other piconets may also transmit concurrently using the same band group, discriminating themselves by using different time-frequency codes and a distinguishing preamble sequence. This method of piconets sharing a band group by transmitting on each of the three 528 MHz wide frequencies of the band group may be referred to as time frequency coding or time frequency interleaving (TFI). Alternately, piconets may transmit exclusively on one frequency band of the band group which may be referred to as fixed frequency interleaving (FFI). Piconets employing fixed frequency interleaving may distinguish themselves from other piconets employing time frequency interleaving by using a distinguishing preamble sequence. In practice four distinct preamble sequences may be allocated for time frequency interleaving identification purposes and one distinct preamble sequence has been allocated for fixed frequency interleaving. In different piconets different time-frequency codes may be used. In addition, different piconets may use different preamble sequences.
The structure of a message packet according to the Multi-band OFDM special interest group (SIG) physical layer specification comprises a preamble field, a header field, and a payload field. The preamble field may contain multiple instances of the distinct preamble sequence. The preamble field may be subdivided into a packet and frame detection sequence and a channel estimation sequence. The channel estimation sequence is a known sequence that may be used by a receiver to estimate the characteristics of the wireless communication channel to effectively compensate for adverse channel conditions. The preamble field, the header field, and the payload field may each be subdivided into a plurality of OFDM symbols.